Williamsport At least nine Tioga County homeowners are said to have been defrauded of $288,000 by two guys from New York in June of last year.
The U.S. Middle District Court received the indictment on Thursday, outlining the charges against Staten Island residents Sun Ton Lin, 37, and Xueliang Chen, 36.
Along with others, they are charged with creating a fraudulent scheme that involved making false promises, pretenses, and representations.
According to the indictment, Lin and Chen deceived people into believing that their accounts, identities, and money were in immediate danger due to computer hackers or other means while appearing as representatives of large firms and governmental organizations.
According to the allegations, victims, many of whom were elderly, received calls and emails from people posing as customer service or security representatives for businesses like PayPal and Amazon.
The indictment contains the following information:
The victims were misled into thinking that there was a pending transfer, that purchases were being made without their consent, or that the security of their account was in danger.
They were given a phone number to call, and when they did, a co-conspirator who had won their trust by feigning assistance responded.
When the caller wanted to withdraw huge sums of money, the co-conspirator would eventually urge them to protect their funds and provide them to a courier, who would keep them safe until the threat passed.
Lin would SMS Chen with details on the victim, including the final four digits of a Social Security number, as soon as the money was available.
In order to gain the victim’s trust, Lin would occasionally give him a passcode that Chen would communicate.
Chen would email Lin pictures and videos of him counting the money once he picked it up.
At the direction of Shawn Anderson, a fictitious PayPal employee, one victim wired $26,000 from Wellsboro to what she believed to be a PayPal account, but it was actually a PNC Bank account with an Alabama beneficiary address.
At Anderson’s request, the same victim took out an extra $50,000 in cash.
The victim requested identification when Chen arrived on June 27 to pick up the money at an address Lin had given, and he departed. While he was driving back to New York, Lin texted Chen.
The two are accused of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. In the indictment, the government is requesting that approximately $280,000 be forfeited.
Whether this case is connected to a similar case in Pennsylvania, where two former Penn State students and a California resident were indicted earlier this year and are awaiting trial, could not be ascertained.
Chenhao Chen is charged with hiring and managing couriers who were paid to collect money in a Pennsylvania computer fraud scheme that the government claims defrauded victims of at least $316,300.
State College students Yankun Jiang and Hanlin Yang are charged with being two of the couriers who pretended to be agents or marshals in order to collect money from victims.
Stories by
John Beauge
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